Abstract:
New Zealand artists take globalised American rap, converting it to suit specific local sites, peoples and struggles. Rappers in Aotearoa/New Zealand, reinforce, explode and re-present essential hip hop tropes, using them to celebrate and negotiate complex contemporary identities and locations. This paper first summarises the New Zealand hip hops scene, then engages with the trope of 'keeping it real' showing how New Zealand hip hop artists 'keep it real' by keeping it Pacific and local. New Zealand 'gangsters' decry the exigencies of their own poorer neighbourhoods, and rap's 'place' tropes extol, solidify and explore a local hip hop. Rap's bragging and battles are used to celebrate hip hop, to promote MC skills, and to articulate communities ('represent'). Narrative and auto-biography tell individual and community stories, reflecting in particular Pacific immigrant communities and the indigenous Maori youth. New Zealand rap manages to keep 'authentic' to the original hip hop culture by re-presenting core tropes and attributes; and maintaining the whole culture (including graf art, DJ-ing and b-boying). This is not mimicry, but the tropes themselves allow for localised expressions which reflect unique cultural and diasporic identities.
